Tales of Symphonia: Web of Deception
by I.K.A. Valian
Summary: Sequel to Dark Tidings. Gaar slowly descends into a pit of personal darkness and despair as he and the others stumble through the world regeneration journey that has become many times more perilous.


"I do not own Tales of Symphonia!" – I.K.A. Valian

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I just wanted to say that I wrote this on a splurg of inspiration. It isn't natural for me to stay up until 2:30 in the morning, but when a reason to write presents itself, who am I to say no. Anyway, I also want to say that I will be focusing more on my other stories and the only reason I wrote and posted this before finishing Chronicles is because I had to write it... Writer's intuition. Anyway, here you go.

On with the Story!

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Gaar stood on the crushed bones, pureed really, of Zelos, Genis, and Kratos. He held in the air at arms length Colette's neck. He grinned maliciously as he watched the life drain from her wriggling and writhing form. Oh how he relished the feelings this was giving him, the power, the high of superiority. His grip tightened and he looked deeply into Colette's eyes. He watched in sick fascination as the light of her soul died out when her neck snapped. 

"How could you!" Gaar sneered sideways at Lloyd as he tossed Colette's corps to the side. It side to a stop some feet away in a heap. Lloyd stared at the girl's dead body in disbelief and shock. "She didn't hurt you," he finally screamed. "Colette never hurt anyone! And neither did Genis, or Zelos, or Da-Kratos! Nobody deserved what you did to them! Gaar! Why?" Gaar snorted and licked the blood from his lips. The taste, tangy and full of iron, titillated his taste buds, sending trills of excitement through his body. He shivered as Lloyd pointed at him with a bloodied sword and shouted with all the determination and anger he could muster, "I don't care anymore! I'm gonna take you down if it's the last thing I do. Got that Gaar?"

"So do it already," Gaar said calmly, his black eyes narrowing as he turned to face the twin swordsman. He held out his hand and a sword composed entirely of dark matter formed in nanoseconds. "If you can..."

Lloyd was about to leap at Gaar when someone shouted, "Wait!" He stopped and looked behind him. Mithos and Yuan materialized, wearing what looked like ancient battle armor and wielding their respective forms of weaponry. "We'll help." Since Lloyd had acquired the Eternal Sword and was currently holding said omnipotent weapon, Yggdrasill now held the Last Fencer.

"Are you sure," Lloyd asked.

"Yeah," taunted Gaar, "are you sure you want to die now?"

Mithos turned to Lloyd and said, "You know I don't like you and neither do I agree with your goals…" He paused until Yuan jabbed him in the ribs. "…but I can't let Martel's murderer get away. This ends now. Yuan and I will fight with you."

Lloyd nodded. "Alright." All three swordsmen turned to face Gaar, who had a leering smile plastered on his face as he tossed a skull up and down like a gangster would his lucky coin. "Gaar, you're evil reign of terror ends here and now."

Gaar cracked a grin. "Finally!" Gaar leaped forward so fast he disappeared. Several seconds later he flashed into a driving kick to Yuan and Mithos' backs. The two angels went flying and slammed into a wall, creating craters where they impacted with the adamantite.

Lloyd spun around, slicing with the Eternal Sword. The blade hummed through the air with the might of a thousand universes and the power of reality itself.

When the sword slashed through Gaar, his body exploded into a cloud of poisonous gas. Gaar appeared instantaneously behind Lloyd and used a round house to kick him in the head, sending him into a wall. Lloyd made an impression on the wall and slid to the floor. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and he tried to stay conscious while the Eternal Sword blinked a few times before disappearing.

Gaar landed softly on the ground and tilted his head to the side as the Last Fencer stabbed the air. Mithos pulled the blade back, but had to dodge a blow for Gaar as he flipped backwards in an attempt to bring his feet down on his head.

As Mithos moved back and Gaar passed him, he reached out with his hand and dark energy blasted from his palm. It slammed into Mithos with a visible shockwave. Mithos was sent flying backwards and would have created a second crater if he hadn't blasted his wings out and dispelled the dark energy. He quickly looked about and spotted Gaar fighting Yuan.

Yuan and the smaller boy flew through the air. Yuan on his wings and Gaar on waves of the dark haze that surrounded his body. The two clashed at incredible speed. Every time they met Yuan struck at Gaar with his Swallow and Gaar struck at Yuan with his dark matter blade.

Every time the blades met, sparks flew. Ever time the blades met, Yuan was blown back by dark energy and Gaar was blown back by white energy. At one point the two of them were repeating this deadly dance at such a fevered pace that even Mithos, with his enhanced angelic sight had trouble keeping up.

However, Yuan wasn't without limits and he eventually was knocked back by an ultra powerful blast of dark energy. He rocketed toward the ground but Gaar had sped up and caught the man by his foot. He swung him around over his head in mid air before tossing him again.

He blinked to a position in Yuan's flight path and kicked the oncoming blue head back the other way. Then Gaar blinked again back to his previous position and kicked Yuan back once more. The next time he blinked across the room, Gaar found himself impaled upon the Last Fencer.

Yuan sailed passed and landed on the floor, skidding to a halt and coughing up blood. His wings faded from view as he attempted to summon enough Mana in the magic dry environment to cast a spell.

Mithos twisted the Last Fencer in Gaar's gut. Then he pulled the blade from the boy's gut and kicked him in the back. He added as much angelic white energy to the kick as he could, creating a small explosion that sent the boy rocketing away like a bullet from the nozzle of a gun.

Gaar slammed into the Adamantite wall and not only created a crater, but a hole. He grabbed a hold of the sides of the hole and pulled himself up and out. He fell the few feet to the floor and somehow managed to land on his feet in a kneeling position.

Mithos walked up to him slowly, swinging the Last Fencer back and forth several times. Gaar stood up slowly and faced Mithos, the wound he had inflicted upon him disappearing. After several seconds of sizzling, the wound was completely gone.

Gaar looked up into the horrified face of Mithos and grinned maliciously. Then he formed the dark matter sword and rushed at the angel. Mithos raised the Last Fencer to block but just as the dark matter sword came into contact with the Last Fencer, it exploded.

When the smoke cleared, Gaar stood over the smoking corpse of Mithos Yggdrasill. The skeleton was charred beyond recognition. Gaar laughed maniacally as he bent over and clenched his hands in victory.

"Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa! More! I must have more!" he shouted gleefully into the chamber.

"If you want more Gaar, then turn around!"

Gaar spun around to see Lloyd. He could barely stand on his own due to the extensive wounds the impact with the wall had given him. Unlike Mithos or Yuan, he wasn't an angel. Somehow, though, he'd managed to pull himself together and stand up.

"You! You can barely stand. If you couldn't kill me before, what makes you think you'd do any better now? Besides, killing you in this state would be merciful and I couldn't bring myself to do that. Go; live in your misery until I come to claim your soul." Gaar laughed at Lloyd, pointing like a little child at a clown while Lloyd glared venomously at the boy.

"I may not have been strong enough to defeat you before, Gaar, but now I've got the Eternal Sword. The blade of heroes that has the power to move space and time." Lloyd struggled, but he held his hand forward and the Eternal Sword materialized in his right hand. It pulsed powerfully, emitting its soft purple light as its might bled off around it, creating a white halo around it in the darkness of the chamber. "Eternal Sword, grant me the power to kill Gaar!"

"Oh, so you think you're silly little toy will help you?" Lloyd was enveloped in an explosion of light energy that sent Gaar flying backwards. He flipped in mid air and landed on his feet. Lloyd emerged from the light cloud, his transformation complete. His traditional red and brown outfit had been replaced with a white and blue ensemble, his ribbons had extended and fluttered in an unseen wind. He now had wings twice the size of any other angels that strobed between pure, painful to look at white and a duller off white. His brown hair had changed to a lighter blond and his eyes, once brown were now completely white. His skin glowed with a soft purple hue, much like his sword had moments ago. In his hands, the new Lloyd wielded the twin swords known as Kaijta the Divine and Justice on High.

Kaijta the Divine was a sleek, long double-edge sword of silver hue except for the tip of the blade, which was a fanned out semi-arch of white featherlike blades. Justice on High was a Katana of a with a blue hued blade and the hand guard of a cutlass.

"I think I'm going to enjoy this," Gaar said and licked his lips. He materialized his dark matter blade and charged at Lloyd. Lloyd, his face scrunched up in righteous fury, sprinted with renewed energy and power toward Gaar. The two met and locked blades with each other. The power released by the opposing forces of light and dark created shockwaves that blew the remains of the other people and things in the room away.

Lloyd disappeared followed by Gaar. The shockwaves from their mutual strikes left mini supernovas in their wake. So fast were they striking at each other that the room was quickly being devoured by the excess energy that was being released. The floor eventually caved out and the walls and ceiling disintegrated.

Gaar reappeared on top of a mountain of the comet Derris Kharlan across from a different mountain top that Lloyd appeared on. The two stared each other down, pumping out more and more energy to counter the other. Finally Lloyd leaped into the air, his wings snapping out and keeping him airborne.

Below them the planet was slowly becoming black. Even the part that the sun shown on was being over run by some black layering. Gaar watched this and laughed with insane delight. Meanwhile, Lloyd started flying higher and higher into the atmosphere of Derris Kharlan. Once he reached the best height, he folded his wings back and dropped like a brick toward Gaar, swords crossed in front of him for a move that had just come to him, one he's never have thought of otherwise.

Gaar looked up and saw Lloyd dive bombing him. He growled and materialized his dark matter blade once more. He then started gathering all the dark energy he could muster around the blade, making it pulse with the dark power, so much so that it warped the very fabric of space and time around the comet. The spreading cloud of darkness around the planet ground to a halt, the planet's rotation had stopped, all time had stopped except for the two combatants on Derris Kharlan's destroyed surface.

Lloyd didn't know it, but upon the start of his descent, his swept back wings started emitting a powerful white light that propelled him forward and downward like a jet engine. This white light also encased the twin-swordsman, making him glow like a falling star. Moments before he clashed with the up held dark sword that pulsed with energy, Lloyd's falling form broke the sound barrier and sent a shockwave across the surface of Derris Kharlan.

"White Fire!"

"Dark Hiroshima!"

When the two forces collided, it was as if the universe had imploded on the small comet composed of pure Mana. A mushroom cloud of white and dark particles blossomed over the asteroids surface so big that it slammed into the planet above it.

The planet shuddered from the impact and crack slowly spread across its surface. Almost before it seemed to start, the planet shook once more and started falling apart. Pieces of its' surface exploded out into space in plumes of rock and lava. Whole continents lifted off as gravity lost its hold and once the large chunks of land were far enough away, they crumbled into many small pieces and tumbled toward the local star.

On the remains of Derris Kharlan, Gaar, bloodied and broken, but very much alive lay next to the equally broken remains of Lloyd. Gaar tried to call on the darkness that had given him power, but nothing came. Equally so, Lloyd attempted to call on the Eternal Sword to lend him some more power to finish Gaar off, but the planet that had once hosted the Elemental Spirits that fed the sword power had been destroyed and could no longer supply anything.

And so the two slowly drifted toward the sun as the star's gravity grabbed a hold of the massive body and pulled it in. As the comet gained more and more speed, the two boys, now drained of any energy could only scream as they were burned alive by the sun's radiation.

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Gaar awoke and screamed so loud that birds over head flew out of their perches, the others around the came fire jumped up ready to fend off attacks, and all the insects fell silent. Sweat was pouring down his face and all over his body, which wasn't quite right because he was the farthest away from the fire. 

After catching his breathe, Gaar stammered out, "Wha… What was that?"

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Wow, well that was fun writing! Tell me what you think! 

**Inri**: "Or else... this story will stop here and now, no more."

**Pit**: "What! No, way!"

**Inri**: "Yes way, Please review."

By the way, if you were wondering, yes this is a sequel to my other story, Tales of Symphonia: Dark Tidings. I highly recommend it, as it is a good story. Though, as you can tell, this story was understandable enough without knowing what else happened... Or not, up to you to decide. Hope you enjoyed it. Please review. Thanks for reading.


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